MONTHLY DISTRIBUTION OF COLLISIONS AND AVERAGE 

 ICEBERG NUMBERS 



160 



140 



120 



100 



80 



60 



40 



20 







D Incidents 



■ Avg Icebergs 



I 



JZL 





.-^ 



r-<> 



^-^ 



^^ 



# 



s\ 



oO^ 



VJ 





«.9 



o 



/ 



.<>^ 



■.<f 





Figure 7: Comparison of 545 incidents in the North Atlantic sorted by month and the average 



monthiv iceberg count south ot'48''N 



incidents are summarized over 10 year peiiods except for the last, 1990 - 2000. The 

 transition to fuel powered ships is apparent, as is the increasing robustness of the vessels as 

 iron and steel replaced wood and the ships were built to safer designs. The chances of a 

 sailing vessel surviving an impact with an iceberg was only 507r compared with 207r for a 

 more modem vessel. The percentage of vessels lost is high both for sailing and fuel powered 

 ships in the decades 1940 - 1970. This could be partly due to the nature of the material 

 researched covering that period where the tendency might be to highlight only the more 

 serious incidents. The decades on either side of 1 890 have the highest number of incidents 

 over the entire record as reflected in the ice severity, and marks the transition of sailing ships 

 to steam power; 65 to 39 in the period 1880-1889, then 41 to 60 in the decade after. Steam 

 powered vessels totally lost to icebergs decreased over the same period from 237r to IS^c 

 while sailing vessels remained essentially the same. Percentage of steam vessels lost 

 continued to fall in the following decades and those around the time of the Titanic have the 

 lowest loss rate of the history. This illustrates that the ships of this time had an ability to 

 survive impact. Of the other two steam ships which sank in the decade of the Tikinir. one 

 was SS Yucatan which hit a submerged berg in ley Strait, Alaska and sank in 8 minutes 

 without loss of life, and the other was the SS Normandy which either hit a rock or iceberg off 

 Tors Cove, Newfoundland, again without loss of life. In this context the loss of the Titanic 

 with over 1500 people is remarkable. The percentage oi' vessels lost after impact is higher in 

 recent decades than those around the Titanic but this is probably due to the type and size of 

 vessels involved. All of these recent incidents have been in more northerly waters such as 

 freighters in Arctic waters or some kind of fishing vessel operating off northern 

 Newfoundland or Liibrador. The I'innpolaris. which went down at 72"N in 1991. had an ice 

 class rating Type A. but it is doubtful if fishing vessels such as the BCM Atlantic, which was 

 lost in 2000. had any ice rating and the smaller size of such vessels without subdivision put 

 them at higher risk. During the high iceberg count years 1993 to 1995. six large carriers 



63 



